re:mote voices

Title: Man Of The House
Cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Cedric the Entertainer, Christina Milian, Paula Garc�s, Monica Keena, Vanessa Ferlito, Kelli Garner, Anne Archer
Director: Stephen Herek

Man Of The House is one of those films that you don't really go into with particularly high expectations. Tommy Lee Jones plays a hard-bitten Texas Ranger, who is working witness protection for a big trail. Except that his witnesses are 5 cheerleaders. Hilarity ensues. Well, kind of. The film is constructed from clichés, and is at times funnier because we can see through the clumsy attempts at being worthwhile.

The 5 cheerleaders do have a surprising range of characters - even if they do on the whole tend towards the airhead stereotype. Some reviews have tried to analyse the film too closely - struggling to reconcile bimboisms with girl power statements. But lets face it, the point where the girls stand up for themselves and the cheerleaders of the world is reekingly jingoistic, the most blatant of self-indulgent feel good propaganda.

Cast wise TLJ pretty mush plays the same part we've seen him play in a dozen films before. Strangely he is also one of the film's producers, which indicates that he was involved on a deeper level. I guess at least he is sending himself up, so we get some laughs from this particular cliché? The girls are headed up by Christina Milian, who at least looks less blatantly surgically altered than some of the other girls. Though she is just another example of a trend towards the idea of the packaged star and "vehicles" being selected to "show case" their "talent". Not that she is particularly bad, just it seems increasingly people are cast as corporate "property" rather than because of their ability.

In singing the negatives of Man Of The House in the end it is what it is - a straight forwardly disposable comedy which has its moments.